Audio News for October 8, 2013

by | Oct 8, 2013 | Audio News

Esa-Pekka Salonen Extends Contract with Philharmonia – The Philharmonia Orchestra has announced that Esa-Pekka Salonen is extending his contract as Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor until the end of the 2016-17 season. Salonen and the Orchestra are celebrating their 30th Anniversary together. In 1983 the almost-unknown 25-year-old composer/conductor was engaged by the Philharmonia on extremely short notice to conduct Mahler’s Third Symphony, and it was one of the sensations in the Philharmonia’s history. Salonen’s achievements with the Philharmonia include over 350 concerts, four world premieres, 27 recordings, the Orchestra’s first live webcast, the world’s first immersive digital classical music installation, and an award-winning iPad app, titled The Orchestra.

Antelope Audio Emphasizes Superior Clocking for Digital Audio –  At the just-ended Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, Antelope Audio demonstrated their new Zodiac Platinum DSD DAC with the Rubicon Atomic AD/DA – the first audiophile preamp with an integrated atomic clock.  ATC speakers were chosen for the playback system. The Zodiac Platinum DAC offers the widest DSD support, including 256 DSD mode and a PCM sample rate of 768 kHz via a custom-built USB chip. Clock jitter is reduced and the envelope of USB streaming is pushed with rates four times higher than those offered by similar devices. Master digital clocks are used in the creation of nearly all the audio we consume today. Using the same clocking technology in the home more accurately represents the clarity and depth of the audio. (Prices: Zodiac Platinum = $4895, plus optional Voltius power supply = $995; Rubicon Atomic AD/DA preamp = $40,000.)

135th Audio Engineering Society Convention, Oct. 17-20 – takes place at the Javits Center in New York City, and will present the first comprehensive look at one of pro audio’s most robust market sectors. Leaders in the business of installed AV, with an emphasis on how installed sound is expanding the professional audio industry, will put on a full day of panel sessions tuned to offer real-world experience and practical knowledge about the most pertinent AV business and technology trends of the day. AV integrators, consultants and others in attendance will benefit from a program featuring relevant topics with compelling speakers who are changing the commercial audio business. Some of the topics: How Expertise in Intelligibility Measurement Can Build Your AV Integration Business, The Practicalities of Networked Audio in Permanent Installations, Beyond Background Music, How the Metro Area’s Premiere AV Installations Influence the Industry.

Netflix Super HD Available to All Subscribers – Maybe – Netflix is rolling out access to their Super HD videos to subscribers, if they and their Internet service providers have sufficient bandwidth speeds to handle it – which many won’t. Netflix is also make 3D content available to all subscribers, and they expect to start delivering UltraHD content sometime next year. By then, many TVs will comes with the new HDMI 2.0 inputs, which can handle 60Hz UHD content. Of course you’ll also need a 1080p TV displays to take advantage of the Super HD videos. Consumer Reports recently did a shootout of Netflix Super HD format movies and Vudu’s HDX format, and found that video quality was nearly identical, slightly below what one gets from physical Blu-ray discs.

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